iPump Training Apps – Review
By 
Like many people in America, I’m trying to get in shape. I’ve been a member for a while at one of those big gym chains. One of the problems I have is that I don’t know exactly which exercises to do to accomplish my goals. I would love to hire a personal trainer, but the cost is simply out of my budget.
With that in mind, I checked if the App Store had any solutions to my problems. Actually, it offered several, but I was drawn to the iPump family of applications from Pump One. They have several versions of their application depending on the sort of workout you’d prefer and, as far as I can tell, they each have the same learning structure. For my objectives I chose the Fat Burn and the Total Body. Each is sold at the price of $2.99.
The iPump applications have three parts to them:
WORKOUT, which gives demonstrations of various levels of workout through picture and video. This is the main part of the application.
LOG, which tracks your workouts through the number of times you scroll through their exercise regimes (some require a manual input). Of course, the system relies on user honesty, but there is only so much a PDA can do.
INSPIRE, which composes e-mails to supposedly send to your friends hocking iPump’s merchandise. I’m not that keen on this feature because using it knocks you out of the iPump application and into e-mail, but it only occurs when you click it so I’ll just leave it with a warning that says “can be ignored”.
One of the nice features of the iPump applications is that they assume you’ll be listening to music while exercising and allow for that, provided you don’t run the video examples of each exercise, which stops the music. There is no clear instruction on switching the music back on without stopping the program.
While the instruction for the exercises within the iPump applications is clear and straightforward, I found the exercises themselves to be somewhat generic. A possible improvement that could be made in future generations of the program could be the modification of exercise regimes depending on goals.
The program also allows you to either work out at the gym or at home (most of the exercises don’t require much in the way of gym equipment). A problem with this could be the need for a Wi-Fi or cellular connection in order to see the videos. While I realize that pre-loading the videos onto the unit would be an enormous resource hog, it seems unlikely that one’s gym is going to provide a Wi-Fi connection (obviously, this is not an issue if you’re using an iPhone data plan). Nor is it likely you’ll want to interrupt your exercises in order to watch the video. The videos are best used for exercising at home.
The iPump applications are good for those without knowledge of basic exercise techniques and require the structure of pre-determined workouts without the cost of an instructor. If used alongside a program for a balanced diet (there are a myriad of free ones available on iTunes such as Calorie Tracker and Meal Diary), then you may have a winning combination towards a health lifestyle.
